First of all, let me say that I have no ill will toward new members. When you stop growing, you start dying, right?

But I have noticed that most of the very-old-thread-bumpers tend to be the new members. And it happens often on their very first post. Maybe they found that thread in a search or something, I don't know.

Perhaps new members could be prevented from bumping old threads until they meet a minimum post count? This would give them time to learn the ropes, and hopefully they will realize that a 7-year old thread most likely need not be bumped....

The first thing the "Old Salts" jump on the "Newbies" for is not using the search function. I would also be willing to bet that them doing just that is how those old threads get opened. If we don't want a thread revisited, lock it!

There's already a message that comes up pointing out that it's an old thread and asking if the person really wants to bump it:

Quote:

Old Thread Warning
This Thread is more than XXX days old. It is very likely that it does not need any further discussion and thus bumping it serves no purpose.
If you feel it is absolutely necessary to make a new reply, you can still do so.

[check]I am aware that this Thread is rather old but I still want to make a reply.

Not sure what the minimum elapsed time is to trigger this, but if that doesn't do it...

Actually, I think new members should be prevented from posting at all until they reach some minimum post count.

Oh, no, wait... there's something wrong with that.

__________________"Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding."
(Milan Kundera, Book of Laughter and Forgetting, 1980)

I am of the mind that I don't mind an old thread being bumped if an interesting point is made or a lucid question asked.

Me either, but I notice that it's usually something just very slightly related like maybe someone asked for advice on the S&W 629, for example, and three years later the new guy comes in and posts: "I just picked up a used one at a great price. I couldn't be happier!"

As frustrating it is, (especially with the blatant warning that the thread is old) there's not really anything we've come up with to prevent it effectively. Sure, we could ban the member. But what good will this do? We can only deal with it on a case by case basis for the time being.

__________________
If it were up to me, the word "got" would be deleted from the English language.

I like it when a new person replies to an eleven year old thread wherein the OP was asking for advice in buying a firearm... Well ya reckon the feller is still trying to make up his mind 11 years later
Brent

Seriously though, this is a web-wide thing to do on forums. It doesn't matter what sort of forum I'm on, there's always some newbie who will dig out & bump some of the most old, stale posts on the forum.
I guess I'd like to think it's nice that they are reading the forum topics that deep into the site, because I can't think of any other answer as to why they find such old posts to reply to.

Anyway, sometimes some interesting ones do get bumped & the thread will take off for another half dozen pages or so. Not so bad, in that regard.

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